Cuba by Bicycle

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> CUBA by Bicycle
  February, 1998
> Elbert Vreeken.
> corelbv@yahoo.com
>
> The sun was setting, colouring the sky in hues
> of crimson and yellow as our
> plane prepared to land at Cuba’s Varadero
> airport. Without much hassle but after a long
> wait at the revolving transport, we, my wife
> Corrie and I, found our baggage including
> our plastic wrapped bicycles which Air Transat had
> brought from Vancouver as part of
> our luggage. We had barely wrested this clumsy
> cargo out of the airport when we were
> approached by eager potential buyers for our
> bicycles. Cuba makes bicycles and also
> imports some from China, but many Cubans consider
> both inferior. Of course, we
> needed our bikes for a freewheeling tour of
> Western Cuba. We had tried to plan
> this trip but in the end and on the end of some
> frustrating correspondence with authorities
> as well as with travel agents, we had simply
> bought our flight tickets with the attitude of;
> we’ll see when we get there. We discovered that
> there is no problem travelling in Cuba
> providing that you purchase accommodation in
> advance. That however, is not our idea of
> travelling; we like to hang loose. What we were
> about to do was almost unheard of in
> this land.
> The busses at the airport were all waiting to
> deliver the pre booked passengers to
> their hotel destinations. We found one not nearly
> full and negotiated with the driver to
> bring us and our bikes to a hotel near the beach.
> The regular price for this was $20.00
> US., but the driver wanted ten dollars more for
> the bikes. I argued that the bikes were
> part of our luggage and found some encouragement
> in this assertion from a German
> tourist sitting behind us. Off we went for twenty
> dollars to the Hotel Bellamar in
> Varadero about twenty Km. East. The German gent
> became of value to us for we learned
> from him that even though Cuban authorities wanted
> people in state controlled hotels,
> cheaper and more desirable accommodation could be
> had in some private houses fronting
> the beach. According to him people were allowed
> to rent two bedrooms of there
> residence providing they registered with the
> authorities and paid their fee. We also soon
> discovered that not everyone complied with the fee
> requirement and thus rooms for less
> money could be found. Not admirable but certainly
> economical for the renters. We
> spent the night in the Bellamar a middle of the
> road hotel. Certainly, Varadero has
> many splendid hotels as good as anywhere in the
> world but the Bellamar was not one of
> those. The price though, was tenable at $54.00 US
> and we had already decided to look
> for other accommodation in the morning. We found
> it a stone throw away from the beach
> in an ample and beautiful house where we stayed a
> week enjoying the beach and the
> beautifully coloured water.
> There are many restaurants in Varadero and as long
> as one has US. dollars, anything can be had. This,
> sadly, includes young men and women.
> Prostitution was
> virtually wiped out after the 1959 revolution but
> the badly needed US dollar attracts
> those who want to take part in the good life
> without effort. The police does great effort
> to keep this element of people separated from the
> tourist but not with total success. We
> shared our beach front residence with a middle
> aged Italian bloke who had already spent
> three weeks there. He was not shy to tell us that
> the Cuban attraction for him was the
> affordable sex trade and the fact that the
> occurrence of sexually transmitted decease was
> low and, as he said, aids was hardly heard of .
> We met one of his lady friends at
> breakfast she was young , comely and well
> educated. We were to encounter a similar
> situation in Havana where the lady of the house
> said to close her eyes to it for economic
> reasons even though she deplored it.
> We had not meant to spent so much time in Varadero
> but two young Dutch friends of ours were about to
> arrive with their bicycles. They, Wim and Gerda,
> planned
> to travel the Western part of Cuba also, but,
> totally by bike while we hoped to find
> transport between the mayor cities and then do the
> vicinity on our two wheeled
> contraptions. Well, we are 35 years their senior
> and not nearly as fit. We did meet the
> adventuresome Dutch couple and together we biked
> the twenty kilometre strip of land of Varadero’s
> beautiful peninsula where we viewed the opulence
> of the past in some mansions now operated as
> restaurants and museums including the
> former residence of the Dupont family who owned a
> large slice of this tropical paradise
> including a private golf course. We met Wim and
> Gerda again in Havana a few days
> later. We had arrived there in a small delivery
> truck but they had biked the distance and
> intended to continue to the beautiful valley of
> Vinales. They each carried dual bicycle
> bags fore and aft containing their total baggage
> including tent and camp stove and,
> fortunately indeed, some grub because outside the
> big cities there is little to be bought.
> Corrie and I spent ten days seeing the sights in
> and around Havana and were still
> there when our Dutch friends returned from Vinales
> and Pinar del Rio having biked
> about 800 Km. since leaving Varadero. Together we
> witnessed the arrival of Pope John
> Paul at the crowded Plaza de la Revolucion. The
> curious and the devout numbered in
> the thousands. With them, we struggled to get a
> glimpse of the proceedings. After all this
> was an historic event!
> Corrie and I biked not necessarily every day
> and mostly not more than twenty
> odd Km. Our longest trip kept us in the saddle
> for sixty Km., a feat for us, for Wim and
> Gerda a hundred Km. a day would have been a
> leisurely peddle.
> Our trip to Havana had been arranged by a doctor,
> husband of the owner of the
> house we’d rented in Varadero. This doctor also
> recommended and arranged for our [Image]
> place in Havana which was the residence of his
> sister Mirta and her two delightful
> children Miguel 12 and Gizel 14 . Their
> beautiful house, we learned, had been owned by
> Mirta’s parents who operated a jewellery business
> in Havana before the revolution.
> Mirta was properly licensed to operate her board
> and room facility and seemed to do
> quite well. Our stay there gave us greater
> insight to Cuban life and living. Renting one,
> and sometimes two, bedrooms mostly including
> breakfast and dinner, provided Mirta’s
> family with a good living. This little operation
> gave her access to US. dollars, and anyone
> with this currency in Cuba is doing well. A large
> black market operates in this country
> and we witnessed daily transactions providing her
> with gas for the car, items for beauty,
> chicken, cheese, ice-cream by the small barrel,
> potatoes, fruit and vegetables and
> anything needed for comfort and sustenance
> including workmen at night or on Sundays
> to do her bidding. Mirta and her daughter had
> their finger and toe nails done at home,
> twice a week, and every other day a cleaning lady
> was there to do the chores in this three
> bedroom home. I'd say if this is poverty I’ll
> have some please! It must be said the masses do
> not do that well, although we never saw anyone
> emaciated neither in the cities nor in the
> country. Education is free for anyone. This
> includes university education for any serious
> student. A young man we became
> acquainted with went back to school to learn the
> Italian language because he had an
> Italian girl friend. The government provided him
> not only the schooling but also a salary
> to live from! Health facilities are also totally
> free for everyone although this facility is
> suffering from the blockade.
> Though we saw much unused land in our travels,
> the market places are extremely
> poorly supplied and nowhere is the abundance of
> fruit and vegetable to be seen as it is to
> be seen in the Mexican and Central American
> markets. It puzzled us. Maybe there is no
> need for more production, one can only eat so much
> and there may not be an outside
> market for surpluses. The only adverse affect we
> saw of this situation was the
> scrounging of many emaciated dogs. Of course our
> travelling Dutch friends were
> affected by it for they liked to do their own
> cooking and without rations which are
> provided only to Cuban nationals and hotels,
> little is available. In the major cities
> anything can be bought with US dollars. But that
> is rather expensive. The Cubans with their Pesos
> and their rations can buy what they need. This
> includes cultural needs. However, even though the
> banks will pay you 23 pesos for a
> dollar US, there is little opportunity for you to
> use these Pesos. Where the Cuban pays 5
> or 20 Pesos for a taxi ride, you, unless you look
> and talk like a Cuban, will pay 5 or 20
> Dollar US. This goes for museum and theatre as
> well; You will pay in dollars what they
> pay in pesos. We found only ice cream, some
> drinks like lemonade and cane juice and
> some, though very little, garden produce could be
> paid for with our acquired pesos.
> Crime is also again becoming a problem in
> today's Cuba. You are almost guaranteed to loose
> your bicycle if you leave it out of reach for more
> than a few minutes
> in the cities and even in the country could you
> loose them. While we had sought shelter
> from the rain across the street from our bikes
> which we had hurriedly left against a tree to
> escape the sudden downpour in the outskirts of
> Vinales, more than one person stopped to
> scan the vicinity for the owners and only our
> vigilance prevented a sudden change of
> ownership. Most of the Cuban people are
> delightful though and many provided help in
> our endeavour to find transportation and boarding
> to and in the next city. In this manner
> we saw rather thoroughly the vicinities of
> Varadero, Havana, Vinales, Pinar del Rio,
> Cienfuego, Bay of Pigs, Trinidad, Santa Clara, and
> Remedios, fanning out some 20 Km.
> most days in some direction from our several
> boarding places.
> We had noticed some flexibility in authority, for
> instance: we witnessed some cockfights
> in the hinterlands attended by a hundred or more
> people. It was a cruel, gay, and noisy
> affair. Lots of people were gambling on the
> fights as well as on different card games and
> lots of money was changing hands while the shrieks
> of the bleeding chickens together
> with bits of flying feather added to the general
> clamour. All this was supposed to be
> illegal and local authorities could not have been
> ignorant of it, for, as we were told by
> one of the major participant who had a reserved
> front row seat, this Sunday entertainment was a
> weekly affair.
> However, the Cuban authorities in Havana showed no
> flexibility. They would only extend our tourist
> permit for another thirty days, costing another
> fifty dollars, and
> we were told we would have to leave the country
> before the expiration. We were not
> happy with that because we had wanted to see some
> of the eastern part of Cuba as well.
> But having received this stern-faced decree we had
> directly arranged for our departure to
> fit this ultimatum. Having told this account,
> several weeks later, to our host in Santa
> Clara who made a legal living from boarding
> tourist, he became rather upset and said he
> would look into this matter. And so, the next
> morning he told us that he had wrought a
> change and all we had to do was go to a particular
> local office and pay another fifty
> dollars. At this point we decided not to upset
> the apple cart and go home as planned.
>
> Would we go back to Cuba? Most certainly!
>
> Elbert Vreeken.
> corelbv@yahoo.com
Received on Mon Nov 13 20:19:23 2000